This seems to be a recurring question among us "software engineers" in particular. I don't think the people who work on, say, aircraft parts today are much bot

This seems to be a recurring question among us "software engineers" in particular. I don't think the people who work on, say, aircraft parts today are much bothered by it. In the Art World though it's been a raging argument for practically the whole of modernity: who's an artist and who isn't? Marcel Duchamp proposed that anyone who says they're an artist is an artist, because intent is what makes something art. Likewise anything made as art, is art. (This says nothing about good, bad, or other judgements of the artwork or even the artist.) Joseph Beuys proposed that every human being is by definition an artist, because the inherent creativity in all human thought and social activity is what makes the difference. He also thought of social systems as inherently artistic -- even your boring old office. Thus the artwork (or brick wall, insurance claim, whatever) can be a more or less interesting artefact but the art itself happens elsewhere. The Duchampian idea is pretty radical in that it removes authority to confer artist-ness. This is similar in a way to how the software revolution has removed the authority to define an engineer. The Beuysian idea is of course much more radical, because if you accept it then the question itself becomes nonsense. I think it's worth noting here that the Art World, as embodied by galleries and museums and professorships and all the trappings of payment and recognition, has mostly come around to Duchamp's point of view about who and what is an artist or art; but demands for itself the power to decide who is a serious artist, and who is a good one. The rich seem to be cool with this; the poor maybe less so. (I did read TFA/watch TFvideo, and I think the point would be the same but the attention different if Mr. Gallagher had said "poet" instead of "artist.")